Johnson bumps back: Late pass of Kurt Busch paves way for NHMS win

LOUDON — Jimmie Johnson had one thing on his mind when Kurt Busch used a bump-and-run maneuver for the lead with seven laps to go Sunday.

Celebrating his third career victory at New Hampshire wasn't the half of it.

"We got going on that restart and Kurt knocked me out of the way," Johnson said. "And I thought, I don't care if I win this race or not. I don't care if I finish this damn thing. I am running into him and getting him back one way or another."

Johnson, after an unsuccessful try in Turn 2, got his revenge at nearly the same spot of the track. Johnson moved Busch out of the way on Turn 3, took the lead back in Turn 1 under the white flag, and pulled away to win the Lenox Industrial Tools 301 at New Hampshire Motor Speedway.

Johnson won his fifth NASCAR Sprint Cup race of the season, leading just nine of a possible 301 laps. He bounced back from a troublesome pit stop on Lap 112, when a bolt problem on the left rear of the car left him in ninth after pitting with the lead. He lost six seconds to the leaders.

"We lost some track position but I just kept my head down and stayed focused and picked them off one at a time," Johnson said.

Tony Stewart, running in third, got loose between turns 1 and 2 and made contact with Busch on the second-to-last lap. He managed to move ahead of him to finish second with Busch third. Jeff Gordon, points leader Kevin Harvick and Ryan Newman rounded out the top six.

Stewart's team took four tires but passed on fuel on its first pit stop. The move had Stewart off sequence on pit road with the race leaders, and it was an uphill battle to earn a top-five finish.

"We'd gain a little bit and then we'd lose it all back and then some," Stewart said. "But we kept fighting all day."

Clint Bowyer finished seventh ahead of Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Joey Logano. A.J. Allmendinger started 28th, broke into the top five on lap 148, and finished 10th.

Until the final laps, the race lacked the typical short-track drama that has come to be the norm at NHMS. After the first caution flag waved on Lap 36 for debris on the backstretch, the race stayed green for a New Hampshire record 201 straight laps until Kasey Kahne's engine blew and sprayed oil on the track on Lap 240. There were just two four cautions total for 19 laps on the afternoon.

The fewest cautions in a New Hampshire Cup race was two, in the summer race of 1997.

"It was a surprising race with all the green-flag runs," Kurt Busch said.

Kahne led a race-high 110 laps with runs of 68 and 42 between Laps 38 and 152. Things spiraled after Busch weaved around lapped traffic and past Kahne for the lead on Lap 153. He slowed on the track and radioed that his engine was "blown up" on Lap 205. He was already a lap down went it went for good on Lap 240. He finished out in 36th and dropped to 20th in the points standings.

"It's tough," Kahne said. "We've been doing pretty good points-wise and that hurts again, but we can keep going for it."

Harvick maintained his points lead, which is 105 over Johnson in second. Kyle Busch is third at 161 points back followed by Denny Hamlin and Gordon.

Jeff Burton got around Kyle Busch in Turn 4 and beat him to the line to take the lead on Lap 201. Burton then paced the field for 87 consecutive laps — until a decision to pass on a set of fresh tires under caution led to a late-race collapse.

Burton stayed out on Lap 284, after Juan Pablo Montoya was sent into the wall by a lapped car in Turn 3 for the race's third caution. The rest of the field followed Johnson onto pit road, and with two fresh tires, Johnson easily blew past Burton on the restart for his first lead on lap 288.

"Obviously that last call was a tough call," Burton said. "It's just hard to know what to do. That was the first time we'd taken off on old tires and I didn't really know what to expect. It's easy to sit back now and say we should have changed tires, but all we had to do was drag two other cars with us and we'd win the race. And nobobdy came."

It got worse for Burton. He got loose and clipped Kyle Busch a lap later, sending both cars spinning, and ultimately, to the back of the field. Both had been running in the top five. Kyle finished 11th and Burton settled for 12th.

"Kyle didn't have anything to do with that," Burton said. "That was all me. He got loose off of (Turn 2) and I drove underneath him and I just underestimated the amount of grip I would have getting into Turn 3. The back came around and I corrected, and he was there. So it was more of an incident with me and he paid the price for it."

Montoya started the race on the pole and led the first 36 laps. He was challenging for a top-10 spot, but the wreck with Reed Sorenson, who appeared to turn right and into Montoya, left him out in 34th.

"It is a shame because everybody is a lap down," said Montoya, who moments earlier slid from the top five to 12th after contact with Gordon. "I am running on the outside. I'm not bumping. I'm not making it tight. It was just one of those deals where I'm not surprised. Coming from Reed I wasn't surprised, to be honest."

NOTES: Logano entered the race as the defending Lenox Industrial Tools 301 champion. It was the New England native's first career Sprint Cup win. "For this place, it's great to get a top 10 and at other places it's frustrating," Logano said. "That's definitely good for us here, especially after practice and where I thought we were going to end up today." ... Earnhardt Jr. salvaged a top-10 finish despite starting on Row 16. "I was real glad the car ran good," he said. "The car was excellent the first half of the race and then we sort of struggled with it the last half of the race, but we still had a good finish." ... The record 201 straight laps under green helped the race conclude in just 2 hours, 48 minutes and 38 seconds. ... The race featured 14 lead changes among nine drivers. Also leading laps Sunday were Stewart (2), Elliott Sadler (1) and Ryan Newman (1). ... The crowd was estimated at 91,000.